Somali officials are closely examining an explosion that ripped a hole in the side of a passenger jet on Tuesday, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Mogadishu, the country's capital, instead of continuing on to Djibouti.

One person on board Daallo Airlines Flight 3159 was reportedly blown out of the hole in the blast and two others were wounded, reportedly with burns. Witnesses on the ground reported seeing the burning body of a man falling from the sky, according to local media, and Mohamed Hassan, a police officer in a town north of Mogadishu, said residents had "found the dead body of an old man," the Telegraph reported.

There were 74 passengers and seven crew members on the flight, and Daallo Airlines confirmed all but one got off safely. "All passengers, except one, disembarked safely after aircraft landed at the airport and currently investigations are underway to ascertain the cause of one missing passenger," the airline said in a statement.

So what the heck happened here?

It was likely a bomb

Planes, thankfully, don't explode for no reason.

That, compounded with the soot-like explosive residue that was detected around the hole, leads to aviation watchers and Somali officials suspecting a bomb was planted on board.

In this photo taken Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2016, a hole is seen in a plane operated by Daallo Airlines as it sits on the runway of the airport in Mogadishu, Somalia.

Image: AP Photo/Associated Press

The pilot, for his part, doesn't doubt it was a bomb.

"It was my first bomb; I hope it will be the last," Serbian captain Vlatko Vodopivec said in an interview with the Associated Press. Both the pilot and multiple passengers have reported hearing a "loud bang" before seeing smoke and fire.

This could have been much, much worse

The plane stayed intact after the blast, but that's not always the case.

On Oct. 31, 2015, a bomb — which the Islamic State claimed responsibility for — was placed on a Metrojet plane filled with Russian citizens. The bomb was detonated when the plane reached 31,000 feet, leading to a rapid disintegration of the aircraft. A total of 224 people lost their lives, including a young girl whose body was found miles from the crash site.

In this Sunday, Nov. 1, 2015 file photo, Debris of a Russian airplane is seen at the site a day after the passenger jet bound for St. Petersburg, Russia, crashed in Hassana, Egypt.

Image: AP Photo, File/Associated Press

Then there was the 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772, a Douglas DC-10-30, which killed 170 — and Pan Am Flight 103, a Boeing 747-100, which killed 259. The former was flying at 35,100 feet when the blast occurred; the latter was soaring over the fields of Lockerbie, Scotland, at 31,000 feet.

A Niger desert guide is framed by the debris of a French UTA DC-10 airliner Sept. 24, 1989 in the Tenere Desert, southern Niger.

Image: Remy de la Mauviniere/Associated Press

Higher altitudes can lead to planes disintegrating in the air. Vodopivec, the pilot of the Somali plane, said Tuesday's blast happened when the plane was at around 11,000 feet in the air — a key factor that likely led to the survival of those on board.

"It would have been much worse if we were higher," he told the Associated Press.

Pressures inside the cabin are similar to those found at or below 8,000 feet, though Airbus says its newer planes aim for 6,000.

And the higher the planes go, the higher the pressure differential, making explosive decompression — and the breaking apart of an aircraft — far more likely at 30,000 feet than 11,000.

"If the explosion had occurred while the aircraft was at cruising speeds and altitudes (which would have happened 10-15 minutes later), it is much more likely that the damage would have been much more severe, and the aircraft possibly lost," Todd Curtis, the aviation safety expert behind AirSafe.com, told Mashable in an email.

"While it is possible that the explosion was not deliberately triggered by a bomb, it seems unlikely given the location of the explosion and the altitude at which it occurred," he added.

Aloha Airlines Flight 243, a Boeing 737-297 also flying at a lower altitude, landed successfully without a roof after it sheared off due to structural failure in April 1988.

There have been some instances, however, in which planes land safely after explosions at high altitudes. On Dec. 11, 1994, a bomb blew a two-foot hole in the floor leading to the cargo hold of a Philippine Airlines jetliner with 293 people aboard, but the pilot was able to make a safe emergency landing. One passenger was killed and 10 others were injured on the Manila-to-Japan flight; the plane was flying at about 33,000 feet when the blast occurred, and landed about an hour later at Naha airport on Okinawa in southern Japan.

But not everyone agrees with the bomb theory

Some officials in Somalia aren't sold on the bomb theory.

"There is a lot of conflicting information," a spokesperson for Somalia's prime minister told CNN.

A view of an airliner after an explosion aboard Daallo Airlines Airbus flying to Djibouti, on February 2, 2016.

Image: Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The airline has not acknowledged the possibility either, only revealing in a statement on its website that "the flight was approximately 15 minutes in the air when the incident happened which caused a hole in the fuselage."

The airline's CEO, Mohammed Ibrahim Yassin, acknowledged the bomb reports but suggested his country's investigators had reached a different conclusion.

“That is what they are saying, but the Civil Aviation [Authority] thinks differently,” he told Forbes. "Nothing is certain."

It was the aircraft's first brush with disaster

The plane in question, a 19-year-old Airbus A321-111, began its life in January 1997 when its owner, the Los Angeles-based International Lease Finance Corporation, leased it to Swissair.

Five years later, in 2002, it was leased to Air Mediterranee; from 2010 to 2012, it bounced between French charter airline Myanmar Airways International and Greek charter airline Hermes Airlines. The Mogadishu-based Daallo Airlines leased it in 2014, giving the airline its first and only Airbus A321, which it flew until Tuesday's blast.

The pilot is a hero

Somali officials should be rolling out the red carpet for Vodopivec, who managed to steer the heavily damaged plane back to the airport. If this had happened to a plane after taking off from JFK, for example, Hollywood would already be calling.

"Of course we give credit to the pilot who landed that plane," said Awale Kullane, Somalia's deputy ambassador to the U.N., who was on board the flight and posted video of the aftermath on Facebook.

“Twenty-five years we’ve been doing this, and 25 years without incident,” Yassin, the airline's CEO, told Forbes. “We are lucky. We are very, very lucky. And still we are very lucky.”

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